"I'll not submit to any mummeries of yours," he announced. "I know your ways, and I am not to be humbugged by any lying conjurer."
"It is not mummery and it is not humbug as I shall prove. Why insult me so? Name rather some dead friend or relative with whom you wish to commune, and I will gratify your wish."
A sudden look of cunning flashed in the sailor's face.
"Can I have my own way in this?" he asked briskly. "May I select the room in which I am to commune with the spirit?"
"But certainly."
"And may I also keep it from your knowledge whose spirit I wish to see?"
His tone and manner were full of insolence and craftiness. Delamort hesitated for an instant.
"It were better that I should know," he said at last.
"There," cried the sailor triumphantly, appealing to the audience. And he would have added more but that Delamort interrupted him.
"Fool, if you insist upon it, I will remain in ignorance of the name of your spirit. But lest you should tell us afterwards that I have evoked the wrong one, I shall ask you to impart the name to these gentlemen whilst I am out of earshot. Come now, are we agreed?"
The sailor announced himself ready to comply, and Delamort left the room at once, Pascal, at the sailor's bidding, stationing himself at the door. Then the sailor set himself to harangue us.
He had seen an illusionist do such things, he announced, at a theatre at Marseilles, by means of ventriloquism and a magic-lantern. It was nothing but trickery, he swore, and if we would unite with him, we would teach this impostor a lesson that he would remember.
With one accord we all pronounced ourselves ready to conspire with him―for what is there sweeter in all the world than to trick a trickster, to hoist him with his own petard? His plan was simple enough. He would choose the room in which to receive his ghostly visitant at the last moment, and we were to remain outside with Delamort, and see that he never for a second set foot within it. Thus should he be completely baffled. Already he was labouring under serious difficulties by not knowing whose spirit he was desired to evoke. The sailor announced then to us that he wished to see the ghost of his friend Gravine who had fallen overboard on the last voyage.
The plot being laid, Delamort was recalled and informed that the sailor was ready to submit himself to the test.
"You will not tell me whom you wish to see?" he asked.
"No, monsieur. You yourself confessed that it was not essential."
"Parfaitement," answered Delamort, bowing. "Monsieur is still sceptical?"
"So sceptical that if you care to make a little wager with me―-"
"This is a serious matter," interrupted the spiritualist sternly. "It would ill become me to employ my powers for purposes of gain."
"I was proposing," said the sailor readily, "that you should employ them for purposes of loss, but I thought you would refuse," he sneered, winking at us.
Delamort threw back his head like one affronted.
"Since you put it that way," he cried angrily, "I will consent even to a wager. I am a poor man, monsieur, but I will stake every penny that I have about me that you shall not be disappointed."
He took out his purse, and emptied a cascade of gold on to the table.
"Here, monsieur, are fifty napoleons. When you have covered that sum I shall be ready to begin the seance."
At that the sailor was taken aback. He looked about him pathetically. Then he drew from his breast-pocket a coloured kerchief, and carefully untied it. From this he took six gold pieces, which he placed very quietly and humbly upon the table.
"I am only a sailor, monsieur, and I am very poor. This is all that at the moment I am possessed of. It seems, sir, that for want of money I am only to earn six of your napoleons?" He paused, and his eyes wandered timidly over the company. Then he sighed. "It is a sin that where fifty napoleons are to be picked up, only six should be taken."
At that, up leapt Pascal, and slapped two louis upon the table, announcing that he would wager that amount against M. Delamort. He was followed by the haberdasher with four louis; then came another with three, and another with five, and so on, until forty napoleons stood against the spiritualist's pile of fifty. And then, lest he should retain the ten napoleons that had not been covered, the landlord ran upstairs and fetched that amount himself. I was the only man who had taken no part in the wager. I was not altogether so sure that the seafaring man was right. I had heard strange things concerning spiritualism, and whilst I had not heard enough to induce me to attach any appreciable degree of credit to it, still I knew too little to dare to disbelieve utterly.
Delamort, who had been looking on with an anxiety which heightened the saturnine expression of his countenance, observed this fact, and now that the money was all there, he gathered up the hundred napoleons, slipped them into his purse, and handed this to me.
"Monsieur is a gentleman," he said by way of explaining why he selected me as the man to be intrusted with the stakes. "Also he has no interest in the money. Will you keep this, monsieur, and afterwards either deliver it to me or divide it amongst these good people should I fail?"
"If it is the wish of all―-" I began, when they at once proclaimed their unanimous consent.
"And now, M. Delamort," said the sailor with a leer and a swagger, "I have announced to the company whose is the ghost I wish to commune with, and I am ready. Come with me."
"But whither?" inquired poor Delamort, who appeared by now to have lost the last shred of his magnificent assurance.
"To the room I have chosen."
Delamort bit his lip, and a look of vexation crossed his face; whereat those good fellows nudged each other, grinned and whispered. But the spiritualist made no objection, and so we went upstairs to the room in which the sailor was to sleep. At the door he paused and turned to us.
"Remain here with M. Delamort. I will enter alone."
"I only ask, monsieur," said Delamort―and his tone seemed firmer again, as though he were regaining confidence―"that you sit without light of any description, whilst here, too, we must remain in the dark, if you please, gentlemen. M. l'Hote, will you have the goodness to extinguish the lamp? I have no directions to give you touching the arrangements of your room, monsieur," he continued, turning to the sailor again "but I must ask you to leave a sheet of paper on the table. I will command the spirit to inscribe his name on it, so that all here may be satisfied that your visitor is the one you have desired to see."
At that a thrill of doubt ran through the audience. Much might be done by ventriloquism and magic lanterns―as the sailor had assured them―but of the magic lantern they saw no sign, and, in any event, neither magic lantern nor ventriloquism could write a name on paper. The sailor himself seemed staggered for a moment.
"I will do so, monsieur," he faltered.
With that he went within and closed the door, turning the key on the inside. A moment later the landlord had extinguished the light, and we were left in utter darkness. The last glimpse I had of Delamort, he was crouching by the door of the sailor's room.
A silence followed, which seemed to last an eternity. The only sound was the occasional whispering of the spiritualist and the breathing of some twenty men in whose hearts doubt was swelling to fear with every second of that uncanny expectancy. Ten minutes had perhaps gone by when we heard a rap on the door, and from within came the sailor's voice.
"How much longer am I to wait, M. Delamort? I must ask you to fix a limit. I have no desire to sit here in the dark all―-"
The voice ceased abruptly. There was a dull thud, as of a body hurtling against the door, and with it there came a groan of fear. The groan almost found an echo in the gasps of the waiting company. Myself, I plead guilty to an uncanny thrill, and I might entertain you with my creepy sensations at some length were not my story more concerned with other matters.